|
Leaves of Grass (1881-82)
contents
| previous
| next
YEARS OF THE MODERN.
YEARS of the modern! years of the unperform'd! |
Your horizon rises, I see it parting away for more august dramas, |
I see not America only, not only Liberty's nation but other nations
preparing,
|
I see tremendous entrances and exits, new combinations, the soli-
darity of races,
|
I see that force advancing with irresistible power on the world's
stage,
|
(Have the old forces, the old wars, played their parts? are the
acts suitable to them closed?)
|
I see Freedom, completely arm'd and victorious and very haughty,
with Law on one side and Peace on the other,
|
A stupendous trio all issuing forth against the idea of caste; |
What historic denouements are these we so rapidly approach? |
I see men marching and countermarching by swift millions, |
I see the frontiers and boundaries of the old aristocracies broken, |
I see the landmarks of European kings removed, |
I see this day the People beginning their landmarks, (all others
give way;)
|
Never were such sharp questions ask'd as this day, |
Never was average man, his soul, more energetic, more like a God, |
View Page 371
|
Lo, how he urges and urges, leaving the masses no rest! |
His daring foot is on land and sea everywhere, he colonizes the
Pacific, the archipelagoes,
|
With the steamship, the electric telegraph, the newspaper, the
wholesale engines of war,
|
With these and the world-spreading factories he interlinks all
geography, all lands;
|
What whispers are these O lands, running ahead of you, passing
under the seas?
|
Are all nations communing? is there going to be but one heart to
the globe?
|
Is humanity forming en-masse? for lo, tyrants tremble, crowns
grow dim,
|
The earth, restive, confronts a new era, perhaps a general divine war, |
No one knows what will happen next, such portents fill the days
and nights;
|
Years prophetical! the space ahead as I walk, as I vainly try to
pierce it, is full of phantoms,
|
Unborn deeds, things soon to be, project their shapes around me, |
This incredible rush and heat, this strange ecstatic fever of dreams
O years!
|
Your dreams O years, how they penetrate through me! (I know
not whether I sleep or wake;)
|
The perform'd America and Europe grow dim, retiring in shadow
behind me,
|
The unperform'd, more gigantic than ever, advance, advance upon
me.
|
contents
| previous
| next
|
| |